cable green – Creative Commonshttps://creativecommons.org
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3232104997560Help us lead the charge: An open appeal to support Open Educationhttps://creativecommons.org/2017/12/04/support-oer/
Mon, 04 Dec 2017 19:05:51 +0000https://creativecommons.org/?p=53944Education is a fundamental human right and essential for the exercise of all other human rights. Because we can share digital open educational resources (OER) for near $0, I believe we have a moral and ethical obligation to do so.

The “journey to open” looks different for all of us. For some, it’s the realization that we can access, modify and share educational resources for free; for others it’s about fundamentally changing the way we think about student learning, pedagogy, and ownership and control of the resources we use in schools, colleges and universities. For many of us, the choice to go open is a reflection of our principles, politics and values.

My journey to open was an actual journey. When I started as the Director of eLearning for the Washington State Community and Technical Colleges, I toured the state listening to students’ stories about their journeys to a degree and a better life. In my travels, I discovered that many students had to make difficult decisions related to the cost of their education. Students told me were forced to decide between buying a textbook and taking one more class, paying for their child’s doctor appointment, or fixing a broken car. The students I met were falling behind because of the high cost of textbooks; they asked me “how can I succeed in my class if I can’t afford the required resources?” I made it my mission to change how we use public funds to build, license, maintain and share education resources to ensure equal opportunity for all students, no matter their economic situation.

Education is a fundamental human right and essential for the exercise of all other human rights. Because we can share digital open educational resources (OER) for near $0, I believe we have a moral and ethical obligation to do so.

As a taxpayer, I expect my government to ensure all publicly funded educational resources be openly licensed. People around the world expect the same – the public should have open access to the education and research resources it funds.

This year, Creative Commons helped:

Bangladesh national government draft an open licensing policy

European Union Erasmus+ program update its open licensing policy

US Department of Education adopt an open license rule

Global Book Alliance integrate open licensing policies into its funding proposals

30 national ministries of education adopt the 2017 Ljubljana OER Action Plan at the 2nd World OER Congress

UN Environment Program draft an open licensing policy on research and educational resources.

US State Department publish its Open Licensing Playbook for Federal Agencies

The Commonwealth publish an “OER Policy Brief” for its ministers of education.

At CC, we’re leading the charge for Open Education together with our mighty group of 620+ CC Open Education Platform members. We’re growing the number of open education leaders globally through training, mentorship and projects. For us, that means mainstreaming open education content, practices and policies, working with governments to make all publicly funded education resources openly licensed, co-leading the open education movement, and creating new production and procurement models that scale OER adoption.

]]>53944Open Innovation in Education Study: Concepts and Business Modelshttps://creativecommons.org/2017/11/06/oer-study-business/
Mon, 06 Nov 2017 19:46:23 +0000https://creativecommons.org/?p=53821The Creative Commons (CC) community has an ongoing interest in how traditional and new business models interact with, leverage, and give back to the commons.

The Creative Commons (CC) community has an ongoing interest in how traditional and new business models interact with, leverage, and give back to the commons. To address this topic, CC published its book “Made with Creative Commons” to show the full spectrum of open business models using CC licenses. The authors’ goal was to answer what many creators consider one of the most important questions of the digital age: how do creators make money to sustain what they do when they allow the world to freely reuse their work?

Aligned with this work, Instituto Educadigital, a partner with CC Brazil, recently published “Open Innovation in Education- Concepts and Business Models (Portuguese / English)”, a study authored by Priscila Gonsales and Débora Sebriam that explores how the open innovation movement can impact the educational marketplace. The study explores and addresses public policies that provide incentives for publicly funded digital resources, paths for companies to be financially sustainable, the role of private investment, and challenges for open innovation in education.

Open Innovation in Education explores how modern society – influenced by the digital revolution and widespread access to information – has often questioned the existing economic model. As opposed to the capitalist economy focused on competition for the sole purpose of profit, the concept of “economy of the common good” is based on collaboration, sharing and plurality. The term “open innovation” was first coined in the early 2000s by Professor Henry Chesbrough at Berkeley. The central idea behind open innovation is that innovation ceases to be something restricted to the private sphere of large corporations. Instead, it should be viewed as an action promoted by the engagement of multiple social actors, transparency and co-creation.

Open education shares common goals with open innovation. It has empowered educators and learners with increased access to knowledge, innovating pedagogical practices, and a culture of sharing. In order for open education to be adopted broadly in public education institutions, there needs to be engagement and dialogue between the State, the private sector, and civil society. To advance this mission, the world’s ministries of education and civil society education leaders recently met at the 2nd World OER Congress in Slovenia with the goal of mainstreaming open education to meet the education targets in the United Nations SDG4. The main output of the Congress – the 2017 Ljubljana OER Action Plan (English / French) called on governments to focus on five areas of action. #4 is “Developing sustainability models” – a call for governments to:

… analyse their goals and needs in education to support the development, adoption, maintenance, distribution, and evaluation of OER. This may include mechanisms to support that work financially and revisiting structures for mainstreaming OER, possibly including adjusting procurement models or the way teachers are incentivised to work on OER. Support and action in particular from governments and educational institutions, is important for the realization of these actions.

The challenge in the case of the private sector is to find viable business models that work with open education. Using reference cases of companies aligned with a collaborative economy, the study presents a viable model to evaluate financial sustainability under a different lens while examining more flexible and customizable products and services that generate value. As a result, more autonomy can be given to teachers when there is a better dialogue between public policies and social business initiatives resulting in innovative results.

This study shows the importance not only of thinking about innovative educational systems but also of considering innovation as something that goes beyond the technological device and that must be constructed in order to empower all actors in the education ecosystem.

]]>538212nd World OER Congress + 2017 Ljubljana OER Action Planhttps://creativecommons.org/2017/10/02/2nd-world-oer-congress-2017-ljubljana-oer-action-plan/
Mon, 02 Oct 2017 17:55:00 +0000https://creativecommons.org/?p=5363030 ministers of education and 690 members of the open education community (140 of them virtual) from 111 nations convened in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the 2nd OER World Congress with the goal of mainstreaming open education to meet the education targets in the United Nations SDG4. In addition to the 3-day Congress program, there were 21 satellite sessions … Read More "2nd World OER Congress + 2017 Ljubljana OER Action Plan"

30 ministers of education and 690 members of the open education community (140 of them virtual) from 111 nations convened in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the 2nd OER World Congress with the goal of mainstreaming open education to meet the education targets in the United Nations SDG4. In addition to the 3-day Congress program, there were 21 satellite sessions with presentations about artificial intelligence to copyright reform to regional OER networks. Creative Commons was excited to participate in sessions, give a keynote (text / video), help draft key documents, and meet with ministers and other open education leaders from around the world.

The theme of the Congress: “OER for Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education: From Commitment to Action” – called for governments to take action. After extensive consultation with the global open education community, the 2017 Ljubljana OER Action Plan (English /French) was unanimously adopted. The attending Ministers further supported this call to action with a Minsters Statement (English / French).

The 2017 Ljubljana OER Action Plan focuses on five areas for government action:

Congratulations to everyone who helped move the world to this moment! Now the hard work begins. Open education advocates, NGOs and IGOs need to help national governments and their ministries / departments of education to accomplish the “suggested actions” in each of these five areas.

Now is the time for governments to review their national and SDG4 education goals, and ask if their existing financial and procurement structures are optimized to mainstream open education. Now is the time for national governments to act:

]]>53630Invitation to Join: CC Open Education Platformhttps://creativecommons.org/2017/09/05/invitation-join-cc-open-education-platform/
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 16:28:01 +0000https://creativecommons.org/?p=53478In the spirit of openness and to effectively strategize, these platforms are open to all interested parties working in the platform area and adjacent spaces. That’s why Creative Commons invites you to join the CC Global Network Open Education Platform!

In early 2017, the Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) completed a consultation process of renewing and reorganizing itself to support a strong and growing global movement. The year-long process resulted in the CCGN Global Network Strategy. Part of the new strategy is to establish defined areas of focus, or “platforms,” which will drive CC’s global activities. Platforms are how we organize areas of work for the CC community, where individuals and institutions organize and coordinate themselves across the CC Global Network.

In the spirit of openness and to effectively strategize, these platforms are open to all interested parties working in the platform area and adjacent spaces. That’s why Creative Commons invites you to join the CC Global Network Open Education Platform!

WHY join?

Stay connected to global actions in open education resources, practice, and policy.

Identify, plan and coordinate multi-national open education, practices and policy projects to collaboratively solve education challenges with an amazing group of open education leaders from around the world.

Secure funding (from Creative Commons and other funding sources) for the open education projects we collectively select.

Contribute to global perspectives on open education to strengthen advocacy worldwide.

Connect your country / region to global open education initiatives.

Be on the forefront in implementing Creative Commons’ global network strategy.

Meet annually, in-person, at the Creative Commons Summit with members of the CC Open Education Platform to celebrate successes, share best practices, and plan for the next year.

Explore, practice, and share innovative methods for inclusive and open engagement with educators, learners and governments around the world..

WHO should join?

Open education advocates working in the areas of open educational resources, open educational practices, and/or open education policy.

WHAT are we working on right now?

Reaching the right people (you!) to build a strong open education platform.

Developing decision making and engagement structures.

Defining the goals and projects the CC Open Education Platform will pursue.

]]>53478U.S. Department of Education Open Licensing Rule Now in Effecthttps://creativecommons.org/2017/06/06/us-doe-open-licensing/
Tue, 06 Jun 2017 16:54:42 +0000https://creativecommons.org/?p=52930The U.S. Department of Education’s new open licensing rule has gone into effect.

The U.S. Department of Education’s new open licensing rule has gone into effect. Starting in FY 2018, education resources created with Department of Education discretionary competitive grants ($4.2 billion in FY 2016) must be openly licensed and shared with the public. Creative Commons (CC) congratulates the U.S. Department of Education for ensuring the public has access to the education resources it funds.

This announcement comes after years of work by Department of Education staff, multiple civil society organizations, and individual open education leaders.

CC’s involvement began in October 2015, when we joined the Department in calling for a new rule to require publicly funded education resources be openly licensed by default. A few months later, CC and other open education leaders submitted comments supporting the proposed rule. When the implementation of the rule was delayed, a coalition of open education organizations submitted additional comments in support of implementing the change.

This new Department of Education open licensing rule follows the example set by the Department of Labor agency-wide CC BY open licensing policy, the Department of State’s open licensing playbook for federal agencies, and multiple other open education licensing policies from around the world. While the rule does not specify the use of a CC license by name, it provides guidance on what attributes the open license needs to contain (see below).

Grantees must openly license to the public any grant deliverable that is created wholly or in part with Department competitive grant funds.

Grantees must grant to the public a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable license to access, reproduce, prepare derivative works, publicly perform, publicly display, and distribute the copyrightable work provided that attribution is given to the copyright holder.

The open license also must contain a symbol or device that readily communicates to users the permissions granted concerning the use of the copyrightable work; machine-readable code for digital resources; readily accessed legal terms; and the statement of attribution.

Grantees may select any open licenses that comply with the requirements of this section, including, at the grantee’s discretion, a license that limits use to noncommercial purposes.

A grantee that is awarded competitive grant funds must have a plan to disseminate the openly licensed copyrightable works created with grant funds.

The rule does not apply to:

funding for general operating expenses;

support to individuals (e.g., scholarships, fellowships);

grant deliverables that are jointly funded by the Department and another Federal agency if the other Federal agency does not require open licensing;

copyrightable works not created with Department grant funds;

peer-reviewed scholarly publications funded by the Department;

grantees under the Ready To Learn Television Program; or

a grantee that has received an exception from the Secretary of Education.

We celebrate this step forward and look forward to helping the Department implement this commitment to openness!

]]>52930Open Licensing and Open Education Licensing Policyhttps://creativecommons.org/2017/06/05/open-education/
Mon, 05 Jun 2017 15:58:34 +0000https://creativecommons.org/?p=52925The new book Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science, edited by Rajiv Jhangiani and Robert Biswas-Diener features the work of open advocates around the world, including Cable Green, Director of Open Education at Creative Commons.

]]>The new book Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science, edited by Rajiv Jhangiani and Robert Biswas-Diener, features the work of open advocates around the world, including Cable Green, Director of Open Education at Creative Commons. This excerpt from his chapter, “Open Licensing and Open Education Licensing Policy,” provides a summary of open licensing for education, as well as delves into the philosophical and technical underpinnings of his work in “open.”

Open Licensing

Long before the internet was conceived, copyright law regulated the very activities the internet, cheap disc space and cloud computing make essentially free (copying, storing, and distributing). Consequently, the internet was born at a severe disadvantage, as preexisting copyright laws discouraged the public from realizing the full potential of the network.

Since the invention of the internet, copyright law has been ‘strengthened’ to further restrict the public’s legal rights to copy and share on the internet. For example, in 2012 the US Supreme Court on upheld the US Congress’s right to extend copyright protection to millions of books, films, and musical compositions by foreign artists that once were free for public use. Lawrence Golan, a University of Denver music professor and conductor who challenged the law on behalf of fellow conductors, academics and film historians said ‘they could no long afford to play such works as Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” which once was in the public domain but received copyright protection that significantly increased its cost.’

While existing laws, old business models, and education content procurement practices make it difficult for teachers and learners to leverage the full power of the internet to access high-quality, affordable learning materials, OER can be freely retained (keep a copy), reused (use as is), revised (adapt, adjust, modify), remixed (mashup different content to create something new), and redistributed (share copies with others) without breaking copyright law. OER allow the full technical power of the internet to be brought to bear on education. OER allow exactly what the internet enables: free sharing of educational resources with the world.

What makes this legal sharing possible? Open licenses. The importance of open licensing in OER is simple. The key distinguishing characteristic of OER is its intellectual property license and the legal permissions the license grants the public to use, modify, and share it. If an educational resource is not clearly marked as being in the public domain or having an open license, it is not an OER. Some educators think sharing their digital resources online, for free, makes their content OER — it does not. Though it is OER if they go the extra step and add an open license to their work.

The most common way to openly license copyrighted education materials — making them OER − is to add a Creative Commons license to the educational resource. CC licenses are standardized, free-to-use, open copyright licenses that have already been applied to more than 1.2 billion copyrighted works across 9 million websites.

Collectively, CC licensed works constitute a class of educational works that are explicitly meant to be legally shared and reused with few restrictions. David Bollier writes:

‘Like free software, the CC licenses paradoxically rely upon copyright law to legally protect the commons. The licenses use the rights of ownership granted by copyright law not to exclude others, but to invite them to share. The licenses recognize authors’ interests in owning and controlling their work — but they also recognize that new creativity owes many social and intergenerational debts. Creativity is not something that emanates solely from the mind of the “romantic author,” as copyright mythology has it; it also derives from artistic communities and previous generations of authors and artists. The CC licenses provide a legal means to allow works to circulate so that people can create something new. Share, reuse, and remix, legally, as Creative Commons puts it.’

While custom copyright licenses can be developed to facilitate the development and use of OER, it may be easier to apply free-to-use, global standardized licenses developed specifically for that purpose, such as those developed by Creative Commons.

Fig. 1: Annual Growth of CC licensed works.

Open Education Licensing Policy

This section explores how public policymakers can leverage open licensing policies, and by extension OER, as a solution to high textbook costs, out-of-date educational resources and disappearing access to expensive, DRM protected e-books. Education policy is about solving education problems for the public. If one of the roles of government is to ensure all of its citizens have access to effective, high-quality educational resources, then governments ought to employ current, proven legal, technical, and policy tools to ensure the most efficient and impactful use of public education funding.

Open education policies are laws, rules, and courses of action that facilitate the creation, use or improvement of OER. While this chapter only deals with open education licensing policies, there has also been significant open education resource-based (allocate resources directly to support OER), inducement (call for or incentivize actions to support OER), and framework (create pathways or remove barriers for action to support OER) open education policy work.

Open education licensing policies insert open licensing requirements into existing funding systems (e.g., grants, contracts, or other agreements) that create educational resources, thereby making the content OER, and shifting the default on publicly funded educational resources from ‘closed’ to ‘open.’ This is a particularly strong education policy argument: if the public pays for education resources, the public should have the right to access and use those resources at no additional cost and with the full spectrum of legal rights necessary to engage in 5R activities.

My friend David Wiley likes to say ‘if you buy one, you should get one.’ David, like most of us, believes that when you buy something, you should actually get the thing you paid for. Provincial/state and national governments frequently fund the development of education and research resources through grants funded with taxpayer dollars. In other words, when a government gives a grant to a university to produce a water security degree program, you and I have already paid for it. Unfortunately, it is almost always the case that these publicly funded educational resources are commercialized in such a way that access is restricted to those who are willing to pay for them a second time. Why should we be required to pay a second time for the thing we’ve already paid for?

Governments and other funding entities that wish to maximize the impacts of their education investments are moving toward open education licensing policies. National, provincial/state governments, and education systems all play a critical role in setting policies that drive education investments and have an interest in ensuring that public funding of education makes a meaningful, cost-effective contribution to socioeconomic development. Given this role, these policy-making entities are ideally positioned to require recipients of public funding to produce educational resources under an open license.

Let us be specific. Governments, foundations, and education systems/institutions can and should implement open education licensing policies by requiring open licenses on the educational resources produced with their funding. Strong open licensing policies make open licensing mandatory and apply a clear definition for open license, ideally using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license that grants full reuse rights provided the original author is attributed. The good news is open education policies are happening! In June 2012, UNESCO convened a World OER Congress and released a 2012 Paris OER Declaration, which included a call for governments to ‘encourage the open licensing of educational materials produced with public funds.’ UNESCO will be convening a second World OER Congress in Slovenia in 2017 to establish a ‘normative instrument on OER.’ OECD recently released its 2015 report: ‘Open Educational Resources: A Catalyst for Innovation’ provides policy options to governments such as: ‘Regulate that all publicly funded materials should be OER by default. Alternatively, the regulation could state that new educational resources should be based on existing OER, where possible (“reuse first” principle).’

As governments and foundations move to require the products of their grants and/or contracts be openly licensed, the implementation stage of these policies critical; open licensing policies should have systems in place to ensure that grantees comply with the policy, properly apply an open license to their work, and share an editable, accessible version of the OER in a public OER repository.

A good example of an open education licensing policy done well is the US Department of Labor’s 2010 Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT) which committed US$2 billion in federal grant funding over four years to ‘expand and improve their ability to deliver education and career training programs’ (p.1). The intellectual property section of the grant program description requires that all educational materials created with grant funding be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, and the Department required its grantees to deposit editable copies of the CC BY OER into skillscommons.org — a public open education repository.

A number of other nations, provinces and states have also adopted or announced open education policies relating to the creation, review, remix and/or adoption of OER. The Open Policy Registry lists over 130 national, state, province, and institutional policies relating to OER, including policies like a national open licensing framework and a policy explicitly permitting public school teachers to share materials they create in the course of their employment under a CC license.

New open policy projects like the Open Policy Network and the Institute for Open Leadership are well positioned to foster the creation, adoption, and implementation of open policies and practices that advance the public good by supporting open policy advocates, organizations, and policy makers, connecting open policy opportunities with assistance, and sharing open policy information. Because the bulk of education and research funding comes from taxpayer dollars, it is essential to create, adopt and implement open education licensing policies. The traditional model of academic research publishing borders on scandalous. Every year, hundreds of billions in research and data are funded by the public through government grants, and then acquired at no cost by publishers who do not compensate a single author or peer reviewer, acquire all copyright rights, and then sell access to the publicly funded research back to the University and Colleges. In the US, the combined value of government, non-profit, and university-funded research in 2013 was over US$158 billion — about a third of all the R&D in the United States that year.

As governments move to require open licensing policies, hundreds of billions of dollars of education and research resources will be freely and legally available to the public that paid for them. Every taxpayer − in every country − has a reasonable expectation of access to educational materials and research products whose creation tax dollars supported.

]]>52925State Department Publishes Open Licensing “Playbook” for Federal Agencieshttps://creativecommons.org/2017/01/20/state-department-publishes-open-licensing-playbook-federal-agencies/
Fri, 20 Jan 2017 14:27:19 +0000https://creativecommons.org/?p=52010Today the U.S. Department of State released the Federal Open Licensing Playbook, a list of considerations, use cases, and recommendations for federal departments interested in developing and implementing open license requirements on federally-funded grant projects. It is designed to assist federal efforts to maximize the impact of grant funds, and create opportunities for innovation and … Read More "State Department Publishes Open Licensing “Playbook” for Federal Agencies"

Today the U.S. Department of State released the Federal Open Licensing Playbook, a list of considerations, use cases, and recommendations for federal departments interested in developing and implementing open license requirements on federally-funded grant projects. It is designed to assist federal efforts to maximize the impact of grant funds, and create opportunities for innovation and collaborative practices using federally-funded resources.

Each of the nine “plays” contains common features, including a checklist, key questions, and examples of use.

Of particular interest is Play 1: Use widely accepted open licenses.

“Whenever possible, you should require grantees to use widely accepted and interoperable open licenses rather than create agency-specific or permit grantee-specific licenses. Customized licenses should only be considered if no existing open license meets the program’s needs. Custom licenses can inadvertently limit the usability of content, because they are often incompatible with each other and with common open licenses. By using widely accepted open licenses, agencies can ensure that their content can be remixed with content from many other sources, including other grant programs and other federal agencies. This also promotes consistency with existing standard practice outside of government. Common open licenses also enable attribution to content creators.

See also Play 3: Make resources adaptable and remixable.

“One of the goals of open licensing is to ensure members of the public are able to create derivatives of openly licensed resources, including by remixing content, translating content, localizing content, and creating accessible versions. There are two key factors for enabling adaptation: ensuring that the open license selected is broadly compatible, and ensuring that the openly licensed materials are in file formats that can be easily edited and tagged.

Creative Commons and other civil society organizations provided key input on the creation of this new open policy tool. The Federal Open Licensing Playbook draws inspiration from similar products developed by other federal agencies, such as the Digital Services Playbook.

The Federal Open Licensing Playbook has been released into the public domain using the CC0 Public Domain Dedication, which means it can be freely reused, customized, and updated by anyone, anywhere in the world, with no restrictions. CC plans to re-purpose the Playbook for use with other governments who also want to ensure publicly funded resources are openly licensed.

]]>52010How can educators find and use OER in their classrooms?https://creativecommons.org/2016/09/13/find-and-use-oer/
Tue, 13 Sep 2016 15:51:45 +0000https://creativecommons.org/?p=51144Let’s start the school year right! Open education is at the core of our work and with many countries going back to school this week, we wanted to kick off our #backtoschool week some more practical advice about how you can use open educational resources in your classroom. From textbooks to courses to entire degree … Read More "How can educators find and use OER in their classrooms?"

Open education is at the core of our work and with many countries going back to school this week, we wanted to kick off our #backtoschool week some more practical advice about how you can use open educational resources in your classroom. From textbooks to courses to entire degree programs, the OER movement has your back with free, CC licensed materials that will help your students access and keep high quality, effective learning resources. Supporting OER means supporting maximum equity and access within education, allowing all students to learn with the up-to-date content, regardless of their economic background.

This post is for teachers and students who want to learn more, get going, and start using OER this year.

Learn about OER

The best place to start is at the OER Strategy document, a living document that tracks the progress of a global OER strategy. This document will help you think through what actions you might take to create, adopt and share OER this year. This OER for K-12 Educators FAQ might also be helpful.

OER must be both free (no cost) for anyone to access and to legally modify (according to the5R activities: retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute).

Find others’ OER and reuse, revise or remix it

Replace expensive textbooks with an open textbook your students can access, keep, and you can modify. Check out the Open Textbook Library or BC Campus for a list of free, CC licensed textbooks.

Why start from scratch every time you need to create a lecture or assemble a slide deck? By using OER, faculty can easily supplement their lectures and learning materials with content that is already openly licensed and available for sharing. By sharing their own work as OER, faculty can maximize the impact and visibility of their scholarly work across the global learning community.

Openly licensed learning materials are easy to find and access, encouraging more independent and flexible learning opportunities for students. OER courses allow students to explore materials before enrolling, making them better prepared before they arrive in the classroom.

Share your work as OER

Using others’ OER is a great first step, and other educators will be thrilled you used their OER and improve it. But don’t forget – you create amazing learning resources for your students all the time as well.

Give gratitude for OER

When someone gives me a gift, I say “thank you” to express my gratitude. When you use someone’s OER, you are benefitting from the gift that author donated to the commons. Make sure you say “thank you” by giving credit – or providing proper attribution on slides and other materials. Check out CC’s best practices for attribution.

Conclusion

We believe OER will replace much of the expensive, proprietary content used in academic courses – it’s only a matter of time. When OER becomes the default for learning resources, we can have a world in which the public has free, legal and unfettered access to effective, high quality education and research resources, and learning opportunities generating more equitable economic opportunities globally for all learners.

]]>51144Open Textbooks 4 Africahttps://creativecommons.org/2016/05/09/open-textbooks-4-africa/
Mon, 09 May 2016 22:09:38 +0000https://blog.creativecommons.org/?p=48362Open Textbooks for Africa Logo, by: Kelsey Wiens, CC BY 4.0 This is a guest blog post written by Kelsey Wiens, founder of Open Textbooks for Africa and public lead for Creative Commons South Africa. On March 11-12, 45 experts from around the world and across South Africa met to discuss opportunities for Open Textbooks … Read More "Open Textbooks 4 Africa"

This is a guest blog post written by Kelsey Wiens, founder of Open Textbooks for Africa and public lead for Creative Commons South Africa. On March 11-12, 45 experts from around the world and across South Africa met to discuss opportunities for Open Textbooks in Africa. The goal of the event was to support the adoption and adaption of currently available open textbooks, as well as build and design a South African focused open textbook.

The first Open Textbook Summit in Africa was hosted in Cape Town on March 11-12 by Open Textbooks for Africa (OT4A). This two-day event bought together 45 local University lecturers, open education practitioners, and open textbooks experts from around the world. OT4A is a pilot project designed to support the adoption and adaption of currently available open textbooks as well as build and design our own textbooks to showcase African knowledge to the world.

Day one included a panel discussion and debate on the challenges of open textbooks in the South African context. Day two was a workshop to develop an astronomy open textbook with a global south perspective. Textbooks currently used by the Astronomy department at the University of Cape Town feature the sky from the northern hemisphere (i.e., upside down). The working group for the open Astronomy textbook has met twice since the workshop, established a work plan, and is anticipating a classroom usable draft by the end of 2016 – for use in the first term of 2017.

The physics group, also based out of the University of Cape Town, is adapting an OpenStax (CC BY licensed) open textbook. They have listed the OpenStax Physics open textbook as a “recommended book” in the second semester of 2016; aiming for full adoption in classrooms in 2017. This shift will save over 180,000 South African Rands to 150 first year students in first year (equivalent to US$11,860) at one institution over one academic year. Additional meetings are planned with University of Witwatersrand, University of Western Cape & TSiBA to promote open textbooks.

For more details and to inquire about how your university can use open textbooks, please contact OT4A at: https://ot4a.org

]]>48362Happy Open Education Week!https://creativecommons.org/2016/03/08/happy-open-education-week/
Tue, 08 Mar 2016 10:11:23 +0000https://blog.creativecommons.org/?p=48140Open Education Week 2016 Banner, by: Open Education Consortium, CC BY 4.0 Happy Open Education Week everyone! Open Education Week is an annual convening of the global open education movement to share ideas, new open education projects and to raise awareness about open education and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Join this weeklong celebration of … Read More "Happy Open Education Week!"

Open Education Week is an annual convening of the global open education movement to share ideas, new open education projects and to raise awareness about open education and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide.

Join this weeklong celebration of the benefits of free and open sharing in education.